Back in April, I finally got around to covering the ongoing divorce drama between Mary J. Blige and her now estranged husband Martin “Kendu” Isaacs. The drama is real, you guys. Mary has told the court that Kendu was taking money from her and he was cheating on for years. His alleged mistress was an artist named Starshell, and she was friends with both Kendu and Mary. Starshell was even signed to Mary’s Matriarch Entertainment label. So shady. Anyway, the biggest drama was about the money, it seems. Kendu wanted Mary to pay him $130,000 a month in spousal support. Now he’s been granted an exorbitant amount of temporary spousal support, but it’s not the figure he wanted.
Mary J. Blige is gonna have to cough up some emergency relief dough to her estranged husband while their divorce plays out, but he’s gotta be disappointed by how much he’s getting. A judge has ordered Mary to pay Martin Isaacs $30,000 per month in temporary spousal support. Big number, no doubt, but way less than what he requested … $129,319 per month.
The court found Martin was entitled to some dough to accommodate the standard of living he was used to while married to Mary, but also decided his dream number was unreasonable.
Mary will also have to pay retroactive spousal support dating back to September … and his attorney fees — that comes to $235k. One last interesting note … the court says Mary and Martin were living beyond their means during their marriage and still have millions of dollars to pay back in taxes.
According to E!, Mary argued that the “lifestyle argument” was crap because they had been living beyond their means for a while, AND Kendu allegedly stole more than $400,000 from her AND her tour isn’t going so great. All in all, I wonder if Mary has access to $30K a month to even pay Kendu, not to mention the $235K in back-support. Yikes. I feel so sorry for her, but I also feel like… ladies, this is why you need to protect your assets!!
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I would appeal, appeal and appeal and pay my attorney all my money before he got one red cent from me. As I heard one woman tell her estranged husband “I will fight you with every breath in my body before you get one red cent”. Let’s see how long the girlfriend hangs around now that he’s no longer living the good life provided by Mary.
That’s outrageous ! !! They didn’t have kids together and his personal “hobbies ” and stealing should have given her a leg up, I would think . I would also appeal. Damn I would be pissed If I were her .
This is why I roll my eyes when MRAs and their female apologists start ranting about courts favoring women. The fact is that when the woman is the greater earner some weird version of sexism kcks in and the courts almost punish her for being the money maker.
These two dont have kids together, they were living above their means and Marys heyday is over but she is paying out 10k more than what Mel Gibson pays in child support and 5k more than what Nas pays Kelis for child and spousal support.
This is a really good point.
One case does not prove there isn’t some favorism to women, expecically when there are children involved.
@ Cherise : I agree it seems high but I think it is a TEMPORARY order unlike the other orders you refer to.
@ Chinoiserie : I was a divorce lawyer for 20 years and I saw plenty of men get custody of their kids WHEN THEY WANTED IT. In most of my cases, the parties agreed to some kind of custody sharing or the man having lots of access while the kids mostly lived with the woman.
Well I clicked on this article to say that it was at least nice that she had $30,000 a month to pay him, but, damn. I would fight this in court all the way if I had extraneous cash to do so, but that appears to not be the case.
Did she have a pre-nup?
This is BS. You would think she lived and married in California.
On a superficial note her soon to be ex is not attractive at all with his lying eyes.
I believe she had a pre nup but he claims he didn’t have legal representation so I think he is contesting it.I don’t know the law regarding pre nups do both people need a lawyer?
Yes, both people need to have different lawyers who are preferably at different law firms (so there is no hint of the lawyers working together for one party’s benefit).. And don’t have your real estate lawyer or someone like that do it. Go to a divorce/ family law lawyer.
I feel terrible for Mary J. She fell for this nasty grifter pimp. Weren’t they friends for years before getting involved ?
I guess this “Starshell” thought she was going to backstab her way to the top. Sounds like it’s not going to work out so well.
I feel really sad for her. This is a fight you wanna battling at this stage of your nor this stage of your career where she should be leaning back chilling and spending royalties galore for the decades of very hard work, sweat and abuse (physical, emotional and psychological) she put in. It really saddens me. She’s an OG who is still grinding harder than most and she deserves a hell of a whole lot more than life has dealt her.
I’m glad this $30k is temporary and given that it has been determined they were living above their means, hopefully it is further reduce. I wish her the very best going forward.
Lesson learned: protect you coins girls okay? Those offshore accounts were invented for people like you Mary. What has this man brought into your marriage? He didn’t bear and raise kids for you whilst you were working and touring, he clearly wasn’t instrumental in managing your funds. If he was involved in your career….well girl; he didn’t do a good job of it, so even if the roles were reversed and he was the woman, he still wouldn’t deserved a single coin.
Disgusting. Men like him are lazy pigs.
I will never understand why a woman with money would marry a man with none. Not that I understand why women get married at all. It’s such a racket.
Hear, hear!
Your comment made me laugh. Marriage can be crazy indeed…
WTF did she ever see in this loser? Disappointing.
“If you ain’t no punk, holler ‘we want pre-nup, we want pre-nup”
This is such BS. It must be so hard when you make it big, and if you are not rock solid in terms of your self worth and confidence, you can fall prey to these money-grubbing jerks.
I am gonna order me some Mary J musica. Every penny helps. #nomoredrama